Susie and I stayed at Red Top Lookout on our annual volunteer hosting weeekend (year 7!!) We walked down to the spring below Red Top on the Blue Creek trail and admired the bog orchids and wetland plants growing in the wet meadow where the spring emerges. We also walked the Teanaway Ridge trail to the agate beds and poked for agate chips. The flowers are sensational at Red Top and on the two trails. Buckwheat reigns near the lookout and the stonecrop grows in unexpected places in the stoney Teanaway formation. Go now while the flowers are at their finest....

while spending our sixth year as volunteer hosts at Red Top Lookout, I took advantage of a quiet time to take a hike down Teanaway Ridge trail...I walked the entire length of the section that Red Top Lookout is next to...going all the way to road 9738 on the north end of that section. The trail generally stays on the ridgeline. It goes through the ""agate beds"" portion of the trail. This area looks like an army has gone through and had hand gernade practice. Big holes everywhere. They've even dug around tree roots probably killing a number of trees in the worst of it. Can't relate to the mentality of digging big holes just to get small crystals and then not filling the holes back in again. I saw a number of ravens who crowed( is this the right word for ravens?) at me and startled seven or eight elk at the northern end of this section of trail. Later, I cruised down the trail junction from the teanaway ridge trail to the Blue Creek spring. It's about 1/3 mile below the ridge trail and has an old fallen down cabin, the wire that used to be the communication line for Red Top, and a lovely spring gurgling out of a wet meadow. There are lovely flowers here including monkshood and parrots beak lousewort. Paintbrush abounds in the small meadow above the spring. A nice pair of hikes regardless of the war zone on teanaway ridge. There are some blow downs on the Blue Creek trail and it looks as though it has not been maintained for a number of years.